and Ferez Bey was certainly proceeding as
planned.

But Gerhardt was becoming restless and dully irritated as he began to
realise more and more what caste meant to Prussians and how
insignificant to these people was a German-American multimillionaire.
And Ferez realised that he must do something.

There was a Bavarian Baroness there, uglier than the usual run of
Bavarian baronesses; and to her Ferez nailed Gerhardt, and wriggled
free himself, making his way amid the gorgeous throngs to the Count
d'Eblis once more.

"I left Gerhardt planted," he remarked with satisfaction; "by God, she
is uglee like camels--the Baroness von Schaunitz! Nev' mind. It is
nobility; it is the same to Adolf Gerhardt."

"A homely woman makes me sick!" remarked d'Eblis. "Eh, mon Dieu!--one
has merely to look at these ladies to guess their nationality! Only in
Germany can one gather together such a collection of horrors. The only
pretty ones are Austrian."

Perhaps even the cynicism of Excellenz had not realised the perfection
of this setting, but Ferez, the nimble witted, had foreseen it.

Already the glittering crowds in the drawing rooms were drawing aside
like jewelled curtains; already the stringed orchestra had become mute
aloft in its gilded gallery.

The gay tumult softened; laughter, voices, the rustle of silks and
fans, the metallic murmur of drawing-room equipment died away. Through
the increasing stillness, from the gilded gallery a Thessalonian reed
began skirling like a thrush in the underbrush.

Suddenly a sand-coloured curtain at the end of the east room twitched
open, and a great desert ostrich trotted in. And, astride of the big,
excited, bridled bird, sat a young girl, controlling her restless
mount with disdainful indifference.

"Nihla!" whispered Ferez, in the large, fat ear of the Count d'Eblis.
The latter's pallid jowl reddened and his pendulous lips tightened to
a deep-bitten crease across his face.

To the weird skirling of the Thessalonian pipe the girl, Nihla, put
her feathered steed through its absurd paces, aping the haute-ecole.

There is little humour in your Teuton; they were too amazed to laugh;
too fascinated, possibly by the girl herself, to follow the panicky
gambols of the reptile-headed bird.

The girl wore absolutely nothing except a Yashmak and a zone of blue
jewels across her breasts and hips.

Her childish throat, her limbs, her slim, snowy body, her little naked
feet were lovely beyond